


nothing better than

by dutchydoescoke



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Gen, Prompt Fill, Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-24
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-09-26 14:36:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9905294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dutchydoescoke/pseuds/dutchydoescoke
Summary: To outsiders, it’sJaceandAlecand then Izzy. Like, in the face of their parabatai bond, she’s tangential at best and insignificant at worst.It’s always been them against the world, anyway.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another fill for the [Shadowhunters Prompt Ficathon](http://ladygawain.livejournal.com/83816.html). The prompt was _Izzy, Alec, Jace, it's always been the three of them against the world - don't let anyone tell you any different_. (Writer's block, what writer's block? This ficathon's apparently fixed mine.)
> 
> title ganked from Play's "Us Against The World" because I'm so funny.

To outsiders, it’s _JaceandAlec_ and then Izzy. Like, in the face of their parabatai bond, she’s tangential at best and insignificant at worst.

Jace loves proving them wrong, loves seeing their faces when they realize that, for all he and Alec share a heartbeat, share their pain, Izzy is just as vital. He and Alec fall apart without her.

When they’d talked about it, there had been hours where they’d argued back and forth between the three of them over which two should have the bond. There had been loud, circuitous arguments about how Izzy was level-headed enough to balance either of them out, how he and Alec’s tendency to feed off each other’s emotions would be a benefit, how Izzy and Alec have been in sync almost since birth.

In the end, Izzy won the argument, pointing out how she was the only one who’d be able to bring both of them back down to earth if they fell into one of their loops, that it’d cement Jace as part of their family, that, for all Alec had a temper, he was more solid and better-suited to Jace’s temperament than Izzy was.

For all that he and Alec are the ones wearing the runes, Izzy’s still important. She’s the one who figures out what they need to do, where to go, who they need to fight. She reminds Jace of a mundane mafia boss sometimes, straight out of the movies they watch on their nights off.

Izzy may not be perfectly in sync with them when they fight, her heart might not beat in sync with theirs. But she’s all the more important for it, grounding them and forcing them to cool off when their sarcasm turns from teasing jabs to cruel barbs.

She’s the one who can pull them apart, pull them back to themselves when they sink into the bond too much and risk running together. She’s the one who picks up on the fact that Jace’s eye-roll isn’t actually his but Alec’s, mannerisms bleeding into each other.

It’s been them together against everyone else from the moment he showed up on the Lightwoods’ doorstep, Izzy and Alec pulling him in and closing ranks until he pieced himself back together and could return the favor. They’ve run interference for him so much he barely sees their parents on his bad days, and he’s lost count of the number of times he and Izzy have kept Alec sane when he’s left to run the Institute.

Izzy likes to pretend there’s nothing wrong on _her_ bad days, and his and Alec’s job is to make sure no one sees that there is something wrong. On the days when her hands shake from the anxiety she pretends not to share with Alec, Jace helps her with her makeup while Alec does her hair and they both talk her through every breathing exercise they know. Those days, they both keep Maryse’s attention, one of the only times Alec willingly puts himself in the line of fire. (The other times are all related to them too, when Jace thinks about it.)

Jace has trouble, sometimes, reconciling the Maryse that took him in with the Maryse that looks at her biological children like they’re little more than soldiers, but he recognizes the expectations that she weighs them down with. So he pulls Maryse’s attention from Izzy on her days and Alec on his and keeps it on himself instead.

The three of them against everyone else means it’s them against Maryse, too. Maryse and Robert took him in, but Izzy and Alec are his family in ways nobody else can ever come close to.

They might be a little too insulated, at times—Jace has seen Izzy’s boyfriends break up with her after a few weeks because they’re scared of him and Alec. And Alec’s rationalization for not finding someone has always been that he’s got both of them, he doesn’t need anyone else. And Jace can’t talk. He’s turned down more than a few opportunities because he’s spending his night with his siblings instead.

When they’re twenty and twenty-somethings and a little tipsy off the alcohol Izzy and Jace pretend not to have and Alec occasionally steals from, they find a mundane tattoo shop and Izzy gets the rune on her left hip, to match his and Alec’s. It’s in a spot usually covered by her clothes, to spare them the lecture they’re all bound to receive for enabling it. Those are the lectures about how they need to outgrow their childish behavior and act like adults and make their own paths (as laid out for them, if the marriage hints they’ve been getting weren’t obvious enough) and the three of them tune them out at this point. The tattoo doesn’t do anything but cement Izzy as the third piece of their whole.

And if people don’t like it, well.

It’s always been them against the world, anyway.


End file.
